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    Etienne, no, they were not

    PF

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      According to Der Spiegel, die Linke has expressed support for the current protests. Anything to smash the system, eh.

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        Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
        Etienne, no, they were not

        PF
        Sorry ursus, I'm not a Simpsons' expert, I don't get it (but I gather it's not too polite toward our John - is the Simpson pointing the finger in pain as what he's seeing is too painfully stupid or something, am I guessing right?)

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          The Ironic Tweet of the Day Award goes to the Guardian on their live feed of the Paris situation for posting a tweet of the French Interior ministry on how to spot fake news... just below their RTs of the utter fake newsy tosh being tweeted by John Lichfield today (my post #1026).

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            John Lichfield, whose articles on France can be very well balanced and spot on, is so off beam on this issue of who caused the huge amount of damage in Paris last Saturday, eg this Tweet, so touchingly naive:

            https://twitter.com/john_lichfield/status/1071393619247013889

            Last week violence came from gj's themselves.

            Last week’s violence came from the Gilets Jaunes?

            Some of the violence did of course, even let's say for the sake of argument that maybe half of it was caused by the Gilets Jaunes, but so much violence and destruction was caused by up to 3,000 ultras (right & left) and the anarchists/Black Blocs who weren't present in Paris that day just to butter sandwiches. Lichfield must be the only one left in France not to have noticed that.

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              François likes it.

              https://twitter.com/francebleuDA/status/1068129064244965376



              He's having the time of his life even.

              François Hollande aux «gilets jaunes» : «Il faut continuer»




              François Hollande a rencontré une délégation de Gilets jaunes ce vendredi matin à Montauban.

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                Re the above on post#1032: time maybe to tweak William Congreve’s famous quote to "Hell has no fury like a man scorned".

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                  When you’ve lost the Bourbon pretender . . .

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                    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                    First line of article: Le mouvement des Gilets jaunes ratisse large etc. You can say that again...

                    It’s a bit like your photo post #1022 ursus, seems that every oddball wants a piece of the action now. The media love it of course and are giving them lots of airtime (echoing Umberto Eco’s aphorism about social media). There must be quite a few ordinary level-headed Gilets Jaunes out there with realistic-ish demands but only the weirdos seem to be foregrounded and wheeled out in front of the cameras.

                    Libération (I think) worked out a few days ago that the 5 biggest self-proclaimed Gilets Jaunes leaders have clocked up 400 TV appearances between them in the last fortnight alone. The first 2 of these Fab Five are:

                    1) blacksmith Christophe Chalençon, the very right-wing GJ leader/spokesperson/grande gueule in the PACA region who wants France to be run by referendum with General Pierre De Villiers as Head of state because "he is tough". Shame Sylvester Stallone isn't French, he'd have been just the man to save France, Chalençon must be thinking.

                    Chalençon warned of "chaos" if Macron doesn’t announce substantial measures tonight (referring to Macron’s big televised address tonight, as we speak actually). "Gilets jaunes" : "Si Macron n'annonce pas des choses fortes, ça sera le chaos", dit Chalençon.

                    Ah, I’ve just realised when opening the RTL link that Chalençon is now a leader of "Les Gilets Jaunes Libres". (Christophe Chalençon, membre des "gilets jaunes libres", appelle le chef de l'État à parler "avec ses tripes et son cœur" ce lundi 10 décembre.) Give Chalençon another week and he’ll leading the French Free Gilets Jaunes Forces from London and broadcasting the Appeal of 18 December on the BBC.

                    Précédemment dans Gilets Jaunes… My post on Chalençon, defo one to watch.


                    2) Former orchestra conductor and civil servant Jean-François Barnaba, first mentioned on OFT by Moonlight, post #984. Only a Swiss citizen would instantly spot, and be outraged by, a shirking French civil servant who's been on gardening leave for a mere 10 years, the French are far too blasé about such piffling functionarial matters to really give a toss.

                    Yes, Jean-François Barnaba has been on a handsomely paid gardening leave since 2008. Our Jeff is a bit soupe au lait (short-tempered) and after falling out with his public sector bosses he was sidelined but never given another post (could well be that no-one wants to have him in their team).

                    So he’s been earning €31,000/year after tax for doing sod all for the last 10 yrs (it was even more a few yrs ago but the mean French public service has progressively reduced his salary, by about €500/month after tax since 2008. Barnaba has the uber-cool and very French official title of "Fonctionnaire momentanément privé d’emploi" (public service sector employee momentarily without a position). Their units of time tend to last longer over there than here, a ten-year long moment is kind of long but that's fine because now he has plenty of time to be on telly and fight the GJ cause.

                    When tackled by a French journalist about his cushy non-position and the irony of claiming less taxation, more public services etc. when he himself has been costing taxpayers a small fortune for doing sod all since 2008, Barnaba replied that he was "a victim of the system" and said to a local French radio: "Not having a post, not having received the slightest offer for the past ten years and having been sidelined has been a very difficult ordeal. Once I’ve paid my rent and other bills, I only have €800 a month for myself, my wife and my 7 children."

                    Jean-François Barnaba, yellow vests spokesperson. We are striving to make ends meet. We cannot live like this anymore. We need change now, not in a few months and certainly not at the end of Macron’s five-year term.

                    Précédemment dans Gilets Jaunes… My post on shirker extraordinaire Jeff Barnaba.
                    Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 10-12-2018, 19:21.

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                      Jupiter has spoken: https://www.thelocal.fr/20181210/mac...vest-rebellion

                      It’s not the Grenelle Agreements during Mai 68 but the immediate increase of the minimum wage of about 7% is a sensible decision.(The Grenelle Agreements, concluded 27 May 1968 —but not signed—led to a 35% increase in the minimum wage and 10% increase in average real wages.)

                      So is the scrapping of the CSG (solidarity tax) for the less well-off pensioners that I was on about the other day. It was a good decision to increase the CSG tax for the more well-off pensioners but he’d put the threshold too low.

                      This "scrap on taxes and social contributions for overtime hours worked" is welcome too, but not new. Sarkozy had created that measure but Hollande scrapped it.

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                        PF, here’s an example of why I was so unsurprised by the Sicilian waiter

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                          I wasn't surprised either ursus, I know Italy reasonably well, I go there regularly, I have Italians in my French family (married to cousins), I know how things have been shaping there in recent years etc. but as I replied to you in this post below I was just a bit taken aback but the way it happened.

                          This bit in Macron's address is key too IMO (from the link I gave post #1036): Macron also asked companies to give an end-of year bonus to their employees.

                          Yep, companies and big corporations in particular must do more, absolutely, they are getting away with murder atm. Not your small company with a few employees but people like the CAC40 companies, the big multinationals, Amazon etc. I wish that the Gilets Jaunes and the rioters had not only focused on the gvt but had gone and seen these people and asked them questions (instead of stupidly vandalising street furniture and torching city cars, newsstands, hairdressers, cafés etc. which will not affect the wealthy of course but ordinary citizens, and the French economy, tourism etc. to the tune of €10 billion at least).

                          Corporations have a big influence on living standards and should do far more. Some civil disobedience and protest actions outside eg Amazon hubs, in La Défense business district etc. would make more sense and be better received, these companies also have to be held to account.

                          For instance, one of the Gilets Jaunes’ demands is the scrapping of the CICE, a measure introduced by Hollande to boost employment which I wrote about in this post. This CICE is essentially subsidies given to companies for them to create jobs. Problem is, as I wrote in my post, it’s a very expensive measure (tens of €billions every year) and hasn’t really delivered much apart from preserving jobs maybe. It has been proven that it benefited the bigger companies too (the banks, the big corporations etc.) more than the smaller ones. Do banks and the likes of Sanofi, Total, Engie etc. who are making record profits atm really need to be given €billions every year? Of course not but that’s what’s happening in France.

                          (In the UK we have a bit of that too, eg the obscene £100 million little bonus to the Persimmon’s CEO recently: £100m-plus bonus for the company’s chief executive, as critics accused the firm of benefiting from the taxpayer-backed help-to-buy scheme.)

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                            This pro Gilets Jaunes pensioner (in the Tweet below, TV news) went to her local mairie on Saturday to register her grievances in the newly-created Cahier de doléances et propositions* to protest against the increase (+ 1.7%) of the CSG (solidarity tax) for a number of pensioners above a certain threshold.

                            This poor pensioner is most unhappy: "There are certainly other people than us that this government should take money from, many of us retirees have small pensions."

                            She is having to fork out an extra €800 a year, that's a lot. Macron is a real bastard to rob poor pensioners like her, it's outrageous, what is
                            France coming to.

                            [*this cahier is a book where people write down their grievances and suggestions. It’s just been created by rural mayors angry at Macron for reasons I’ve explained here before, but essentially because Macron is phasing out one of the 2 property taxes and communes will lose part of their income, and it’ll affect villages & small towns the most as they have less income coming from the Taxe professionnelle than bigger towns that will be more able to absorb the shortfall in income; the Taxe professionelle, ~corporation tax, is the levy taken by French towns on companies operating in their commune, something like €40bn a year in total I think, most of it is pocketed by the commune itself).

                            Erm, actually, hang on a second... +1.7% = an extra €800 on her pension... yep, that means that her pension is €45,000 net a year, nearly €4,000 a month.

                            (she’s not an exception, I hear the same in my family).

                            https://twitter.com/jeanphihidalgo/status/1071830476971745286
                            Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 10-12-2018, 22:36.

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                              Hence McDonnell backing the triple lock for UK pensioners. They vote and they moan.

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                                https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1072487468472111105

                                Based on those self-identifying as Gilets Jaunes in recent polls.

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                                  Tiens, tiens, tiens... Last night in my post #1036 I wrote: This "scrap on taxes and social contributions for overtime hours worked" is welcome too, but not new. Sarkozy had created that measure but Hollande scrapped it.

                                  This measure announced by Macron to placate the Gilets Jaunes means that overtime will be "défiscalisé" and "désocialisé", meaning that overtime hours would no longer be taxed and that these hours will not be factored into the calculation of welfare benefits (a bit complex but a key thing for the JAMs and working poor, I can explain later). This is sthg that had been created under Sarkozy in 2007 and then scrapped early doors by Hollande in 2012 (too expensive, didn’t boost employment etc.). It pissed off a few million people who were a bit hooked on doing overtime.

                                  It was one of the few Sarkozy measures that were popular with many low-to-mid-earning workers in particular. It certainly had its drawbacks macro-economically but concretely it encouraged people to do more overtime for which they got more buck for their money (not taxed) and, important bit, these hours were "invisible" to the welfare system, which means that if you received welfare benefits (eg Housing benefits) you didn't risk losing some benefits by earning more than the various benefits' threshold. I know some people who earned an extra €500 a month at busy times of the year, when their company would ask them to do overtime several times in the year in all-hands-to-the-pumps situations. Many of these people were pissed off when Hollande axed that measure. I remember for instance talking to a waiter in France who roughly lost €250 a month because of it, and more in the busy months (touristic area).

                                  Well well well, looks like Macron didn’t reinstate that Sarko measure by chance:

                                  Sarkozy, conseiller de l’ombre de Macron

                                  L’ancien chef de l’Etat a été reçu à l’Elysée par l’actuel président de la République, le 7 décembre. Il semble avoir été écouté sur certaines des mesures annoncées lundi.


                                  The fucker has never been away, has he? He seems to be worming his way back into French politics atm, the current leader of the right (Laurent Wauquiez) is unpopular and only polling 15% tops for the Europeans next year, Macron's not terribly popular either and various polls have Sarkozy as the right-wingers’ favourite candidate for the right. It’s all academic though as he is dogged by several investigations into his shady dealings when president and his next legal battle, the Bygmalion scandal (€20 million embezzled from the state to finance his 2012 presidential campaign) could render him ineligible for a long time (trial end of next year probably).

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                                    Shooting in Strasbourg

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                                      Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                                      Hence McDonnell backing the triple lock for UK pensioners. They vote and they moan.
                                      There are 16 million pensioners in France and they are keen voters so a bit strategic mistake there by Macron, although of course he was right to target the most well-off pensioners and ask them to contribute a little more via this CSG tax, a sort of solidarity tax created in 1991 that everyone pays, it's not just pensioners. In fact workers pay a higher rate than pensioners, so it's not that pensioners were asked to contribute more but the same as everyone else (not even the same in fact but lower as it's 9% for workers vs 8% for pensioners and that's after the 1.7% increase), that's why Macron bumped it up by 1.7% a year ago for pensioners earning over €15,000. But as I've written here before, he set the increase threshold (€15,000/year) too low so plenty low-income pensioners were caught in the trawl. He rectified that last night: only pensioners earning >€24K net a year will be affected by this minor increase that seems to have incensed many of them.

                                      The whole thing reached new heights of ridicule today with the more well-off pensioners (those earning >€24K net a year) being incensed about Macron not extending the axing of this minor increase of the CSG solidarity tax to all pensioners. They’ve thrown a wobbly and their unions are planning a national protest on Dec. 18th. (On the Net: CSG : les syndicats de retraités « en colère » appellent à manifester le 18 décembre). It’d be quite amusing if they tried to ransack shops and torch cars, the CRS would probably let them off mind. I know it the role of the unions to always push for more but FFS, let’s keep things in perspective here, we’re taslong of +1.7%…

                                      I am sometimes appalled at what I hear from the (mostly) well-off pensioners in my family and their acquaintances, most of them have a lifestyle ranging from comfortable to positively lavish, with many being both asset rich and cash rich, but some of them refuse to accept any increase to the solidarity tax even if, as I've just said, they were paying 2.5% less in the first place than ordinary workers, people with a family, a mortgage, a whole life to finance etc. The thing is, most of these comfortable/wealthy pensioners in my family were ordinary workers (pple who voted socialist for a lot of their working life, less so now) and made their money a little fortuitously shall we say, on the back of the Trente Glorieuses mostly via property hyper-inflation, therefore through a mix of lucky timing, clever buying and a graft too (doing property up, taking calculated risks), buying and selling at the right time basically. They didn’t sit on their arses waiting for money to fall that’s certainly true but they did benefit from the right circumstances, both financially in terms of the general property & mortgage market and professionally (secure stress-free employment for life).

                                      eg People who bought or self-built a house in Paris/Greater Paris or the Riviera in the 1960s-70s for something like £10K-£12K and 40 yrs or so down the line find that they were sitting on a gold mine and their asset(s) was/were worth up to a 100 times more. All these years too, credit was relatively cheap and easy to come by. OK, rates were high but banks loved the job-for-life security factor and bank financial products had good yields too (certainly much better than the piffling 1.5% rates you get today, tops), you could double your money in a few years. It enabled them to buy second homes, or holiday flats, townhouses, some land etc. for pleasure and/or as investments. And investing on a couple of cheap townhouses on the south-east coast or Languedoc in the 1970s-80s turned to be a damn good idea, these coastal areas are booming now. So it’s a little galling to hear them whinge now about being asked to contribute a tiny bit more…

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                                        At least two dead in Strasbourg per Monde.

                                        An official anti-terrorism investigation has been opened.

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                                          State of emergency being back should clear the streets sharpish

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                                            My other half is working in Strasbourg this week. She rang just after eight to say she'd heard gunshots. The place where she is staying is just round the corner from the Christmas market, less than 100 yards away. When she looked out of her window there were soldiers with machine guns sheltering in her doorway!

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                                              As hard as it might to be believe, that is a relatively good position for her to be in given the awful circumstances.

                                              As the attacker (who reportedly has been identified) is still at large, people have been ordered to shelter in place, including at bars and restaurants in the centre, cinemas, the basketball arena and the European Parliament.

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                                                Jesus. RTE saying 2 dead and 11 seriously wounded. Also that attacker known to police and identified as a security threat, which I suppose is suggestive. That's all we need. The unleashed anger of this tea party communard mix diverted into something else.

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                                                  @ursus indeed, she's on the first floor and went to bed with her laptop. Tomorrow she would normally go through the Christmas market area to get to work.

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                                                    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                                    https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1072487468472111105

                                                    Based on those self-identifying as Gilets Jaunes in recent polls.
                                                    Maybe of interest to you, this profile of the Gilets Jaunes in tonight's France 2 news bulletin, from 12’52 to 14’30 here: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-j...8_3046333.html

                                                    (it's fact a summary of a Le Monde sociological study published yesterday, this one: « Gilets jaunes » : une enquête pionnière sur la « révolte des revenus modestes »Un collectif de chercheurs présente, dans une tribune au « Monde », les premiers résultats d’une étude détaillée qui s’appuie sur 166 questionnaires distribués sur des ronds-points et lors de manifestations.)

                                                    According to this Le Monde study then, 33% of Gilets Jaunes are apolitical, 15% are far left and 5% far right (at 13’58 in the video link) – nothing in the clip about the remaining 47%, you probably have to be a Le Monde subscriber to find out!

                                                    I am very sceptical about only 5% of GJ being far rightists in this Le Monde study, given that the national % atm is about 20%. That would mean that the GJ are 4 times less far rightist than the national average, seems very unlikely to me. The 35% in your graph is high but that sort of 20-35% ballpark figure is far more likely than 5%. Unfortunately, the Le Monde study is behind a paywall so no way to know their methodology.

                                                    What I have found (through footage of the GJ movement, radio progs, articles) tallies far more with your graph's figures. I have heard plenty of Gilets Jaunes say that they're apolitical, that they abstained last year and usually abstain in elections but when they’re made to develop, they don’t sound that apolitical. The fact that they abstained in last year’s elections or previous ones doesn’t mean much in this particular GJ context, many of the GJ abstainers effectively express ideas (or lack thereof) in accordance with the Front National's or a similar nihilistic rhetoric, whether they’re aware of it or not. Wanting to rule France "by referendum" for instance, which you hear/see a lot from the GJ, is very anti-parliamentarian. It might be apolitical in that it belongs to neither side but it’s still straight from the Anarchist and Revolutionary "let’s shake things up" Cookbook and is more likely to be motivated by far right ideology if you scratch a bit deeper.

                                                    It’s not just a far right thing, the disenchanted members of the far left can be just as extremist and lost. The Gilet Jaune nurse in the clip in my post #1020, who agreed with her husband on what he says about referenda (I detailed it in that post but the gist of it is: "Let's have referenda, let ordinary people set the questions and let's try out the grassroots' ideas and we can change if we don't like the result") was a CGT member (communist union) for years before leaving the union. The lines are often blurred between the extremes and there is a lot of porosity between the two poles. The end product of such reasoning vaguely based on the fantasy of running a country like France by referendum can only be chaos =>extremism=>dictatorship. Whether that dictatorship would be right-wing or left-wing is irrelevant, just in economic terms alone the results would be catastrophic.
                                                    Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 11-12-2018, 23:51.

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